News Archive

Why Ambode Doesn't Deserve 2nd Term - Muiz Banire

Dr. Muiz Banire, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, is a
man of many addresses. A law teacher, legal practitioner, politician and
convener, United Action for Change, a political advocacy and leadership
capacity building organisation. The erstwhile National Legal Adviser of
the ruling All Progressives Congress is often viewed in certain
quarters as controversial on account of his principled positions on
issues. But in all, he is not bothered. Thus, in this interview with
Olawale Olaleye and Olaseni Durojaiye, he holds nothing back as he
dissects issues of political currency and sundry others.

It is
curious to know that you were the first person to stand more or less
against the current Governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode. You stood
against him in many respects. Why was this so? Was it that the two of
you had certain connections not known to the public or could it be a
case of animosity towards him? However, it would seem that some of what
you feared would happen are beginning to unfold, what exactly did you
see that made you uncomfortable with his choice?

In the first
instance, I regard what we are experiencing in the state right now as a
divine intervention in the interest of the state as a whole and that of
politicians as well. Like you rightly said, I saw this right from
inception but I was the lone voice that shouted several times but the
party people never saw it. Rather, most of them castigated and harassed
me and kept intimidating me, even victimised me. But of course, I was
unrelenting, undaunted and resolute.

Now, God has suddenly opened
their eyes to the reality and all of them have now taken the gauntlet
and shouting ‘we’re fed up with the governor; we don’t want him again’.
In the first instance, he has never been part of the political movement
of this state or part of the governance system; he was at best an
Accountant General.He never dealt with the issues of policies,
development and programmes with us. We dealt with such. It would have
been best if somebody within that circle, who must have known where we
left issues; people that we had dealt with; those to be sustained, those
to be improved on and those to be jettisoned.

But somebody, who
spent the larger part of his life at the council level and suddenly
emerged at the state level as Accountant General now governing a state
as complex as Lagos? Certainly, it would be challenging to him. I saw
the picture and knew we were endangering ourselves generally and I drew
the attention of everybody including Asiwaju to it then.

Unfortunately,
despite the fact that we were not only coerced into working for him,
which we all did. In fact, I used to boast that I was among the top five
people that worked for him to get to where he is today, but what did we
get in return? Of course, we are living witnesses to my own story.

Regardless,
the reality is that once you get to that position, even the people that
are highly cerebral will still be receptive to ideas and suggestions
from others. But what about someone, who shuts his doors at other people
and believes he’s the only one who can do things the way and manner he
considers right? The result is what we are seeing today. Today,
everybody has now seen including the general populace (not only the
politicians) that we are all endangered except something is done. I
thank God that I am vindicated at the end of the day.

But what
do you think informs his now resentful disposition? Could it be lack of
exposure especially, that you said he spent a major part of his life at
the local government?

Well, exposure might be part of the
reasons. It is not even about going to school alone. Like we used to
joke, some people passed through the university but the university did
not pass through them. Beyond that, the fact that you have a degree
doesn’t mean you will make a good manager to start with.

Second,
experience and exposure matter. You can never discount experience
particularly in governance. My experience has shown me that if you bring
any one from outside of the system to come and govern any state, he
will still be struggling the first two years and by the third year, he
will just be laying foundation and the next election is already around
the corner.

Beyond that, again, the nature of the person also
counts. As a leader, you must be receptive to everybody’s idea and you
must be accessible. Once a leader is not accessible, he has already
failed. People must be able to reach you; they must be able to interact
with you; they must also be able to criticise you; you must be receptive
to criticisms.

A leader that is not receptive has failed.
Unfortunately, I think it is just his nature. He is just not receptive
to others and there appears to be some measure of arrogance in him that
will not allow him to share other people’s opinion. You can’t be right
on all issues.The fact that they call you ‘Your Excellency,’ does
not mean you are excellent; it is just a glorification. He probably got
the title of ‘His Excellency’ wrong to think he could do no wrong. It
can’t be. The state does not belong to one person; we are all
stakeholders in the state. Any policy that is introduced will affect us
all in one way or the other, so when we voice out our opinion, why must
you then persecute us, more so some of us are Lagosians of the first
order?

A lot of people had done several analyses of him but I
really don’t know what the problem is with him. Again, like I said
earlier, you can never discount the issue of experience and exposure,
which he lacks when it comes to the issue of governance.

As an insider, at what time did Asiwaju realise it was time to pull the plug on the governor’s second term bid?

I
honestly don’t know. What I know is that in the last four or five
months, there has been a subtle evaluation of the administration, and I
could tell from his body language and that of people around him that
they were beginning to realise that they were in trouble.

By that
time, they had begun to realise that if the governor was presented for a
second term, the success of the party at the poll was endangered.
Again, information reaching me shows that there have been some polls,
which showed that there was a looming problem if the party went ahead to
field the current governor in the polls.

Since the drama
surrounding the second term bid of Governor Ambode began, a lot of
people have been speculating what the shortcomings are. Can we have you
address the specifics?

There are a lot of issues and I do
point them out but people were like why say it and I am like why won’t I
say what I know. Take the issue of Environment, for instance. I
personally know the state of the environment when I left as
commissioner. Again, take the issue of climate change.

As of that
time we were among the first 10 in the entire world. Our activities on
climate change earned us a seat on the Board of World Health
Organisation during that period. There was hardly anywhere in the world
where the issue of climate change was to be discussed without involving
Lagos State, because we escalated the issue and took it so seriously so
much that we became a force to be reckoned with. Where is the issue of
climate change today? It is as good as dead.

Look at the issue of
waste management. We had succeeded largely in empowering people by way
of private sector participation in waste management. We were getting it
right and improving. Suddenly, somewhere somebody came with one funny
policy and one funny company, maybe from space, emerged to manage our
waste. So, Nigerians can no longer manage our wastes and we had to go
and get a foreign company to come and help us manage wastes.

When
the company came in, I granted an interview wherein I said from what I
have seen of them, definitely, the company had no experience in waste
management. The moment I started seeing wheeler bins on the roads –
nowhere in the world do they put wheeler bins on the road except at
construction sites and where they are normally put them are hidden areas
or designated dump sites.

What you find on the roads and streets
are litter bins, smaller ones like drums. So, immediately I saw that, I
said definitely this company does not have experience in waste
management. Yet, Lagos State went ahead to give guarantee in billions
for such an inexperienced company?Then they started putting up
wheeler bins on the road thereby legalising dumping of refuse on the
road and turning the spots to dumpsites. So, people were populating the
spots with refuse and they couldn’t cope. Eventually, see where we are
today. Half of the state is in state of epidemic as we talk. You need to
go to the hinterland – Mushin, Ajegunle and others – in fact, as far as
I am concerned, those ones live on refuse dump.

Look at how
flood now ravages the state. We had conquered flood largely. We took the
issue of flood control very seriously. We used to prepare for the rainy
season as if you were preparing for marriages or any social event.
Apart from the fact that we had a programme to clean all the drains
every quarter, few months to every rainy season we’d mobilised all
resources and cleaned all the channels.

We will mobilise all the
local government councils, they take over the tertiary drainage and we
take over the secondary canals. We would clear all the drainages
immediately. What they do today is that they will give out works. I saw
one of them, the contractor claimed to have done three kilometres
whereas he only did the first 300 metres, so, they will only peep and
say, ‘see that one and they’d say yes the job is done’. That is the kind
of scenarios that you see today.

When I was in the environment
ministry, it dared not happen. Some of my members of staff are still
alive. We would go from one end to the other; we were on the road all
weekends and our phones were open to all residents to tell us anywhere
there was problem. We don’t sleep, we were alive to our responsibilities
and challenges, but all these are no more in place.

During the
Fashola administration you dared not engage in construction works and
endanger the populace; you dared not litter the place with stone or iron
rods, not all what you have today. Doing so not only constitutes danger
to residents, it is also an abuse of the environment. In fact, the
aesthetics of the state is largely gone.

Talk about
transportation. I saw the buses that they just imported and I started
laughing. How could anyone have thought of such buses in this age and
time in a city like Lagos? In fact, Lagos is more than a mega city; we
are in excess of 20 million. A mega city is a city within a population
of 10 million.

Right from the period of Jakande, we had known
that what we need in Lagos are Mass Transit buses. How could we bring in
those types of buses at this age? We are going back. The buses will
only compound the traffic situation.Again, we have enough bus stops
that are not being used in Lagos, yet, they are building more and more
bus stops all over Lagos, when people will not use it. The funds being
wasted in that area if I were in his shoes I would have expended it on
motivating LASTMA officials, get them more logistics to manage the
traffic in the state.

In London, they make use of high capacity
buses – mass transit buses – yet how many layby do you see around
London, because they are supposed to be moving? At each bus stop, they
can spend more than a minute. Why would somebody want to build houses
for miscreants and shops for ogogoro sellers and petty traders? Just be
patient, you would see that in another three to four months, that is
what it would turn to. You are creating another social menace, because
that is where all of them will turn to as their new market.

These
are part of the dangers of not looking at things holistically. You must
always look at things holistically. Look at the BRT initiative. I
introduced BRT to Lagos State and we had our plans. They have distorted
it now. I feel ashamed when I see the construction going on along Agege
Motor road; I feel ashamed at how they have messed up the whole road and
how they have technically shown the physically challenged the red card.

They
are building some funny looking pedestrian bridges all over the road.
In the first place, how does the physically challenged get to the middle
of the road to join the BRT buses? What you have on that road is what
is called design error. The BRT should have been on the outer lane. They
didn’t know how I introduced or why I introduced the one on Ikorodu
Road, because they never asked. Instead of them to ask how we arrived at
that conclusion, they didn’t ask; they just went there and started
replicating what we did on Ikorodu Road, without factoring several other
considerations.

They thought the solution was to put pedestrian
bridges in place. Even the pedestrian bridges are so ugly. Some
engineers have even queried the stability and integrity of those
pedestrian bridges. From my perspective, the beauty of that place has
been disfigured completely.

Somebody was talking about Airport
Road and I said to them that it was during my administration that we
designed the Airport Road. I gave him the design.The construction
ought to have taken place during Fashola’s tenure, but for the fact that
the federal government at the time said after the construction was
completed, they would be the ones that would collect revenue from the
adverts on the road, then we said how can that be? How can I be playing
for IICC and be collecting salary from Rangers Football Club? It doesn’t
add up. That was the basis upon which we could not go ahead.

Then
Fashola said now that I am the minster, I am ready to construct the
road with federal government funds, he said no. He said he would do it
with Lagos State funds, the money that could have been diverted to
several inner roads that are in terrible state now. He made us miss that
money. Fashola came around and said he has appropriated money for that
road in the federal budget and it will be done, and you take another
place, the next thing was blackmail.

What are the interventions
in schools? I go to the General Hospital in Ikeja and I see patients on
the floor in state. With N30billion internally generated revenue? This
is part of the problem caused by somebody, who has not been part of the
system and suddenly assumed leadership of the state. If it had been any
of these two people that are being paraded now, Obafemi Hamzat and
Babajide Sanwo-Olu, apart from the fact that they have been part of the
system since 2003, they know everything about what we have been doing.
They are best suited for the job. They know who and who did what; they
can always call people up to ask questions: what happened during so so
and so project? What did we conclude on?

Why didn’t we go ahead
with that project? In my own very strong view, that is what is called
continuity. Somebody that has been part of the system takes over from
one person and who takes over from that person is also from within the
system. That is what is called continuity. When I was raising these
issues, everybody was abusing, denigrating me and saying all manners of
things. Am I not being vindicated today?

Do you think it is too late to get him a re-election ticket?

No,
it’s not too late, and that is one of the misconceptions that get me
angry since this drama started. He took nomination form, Hamzat took the
same form and Jide Sanwoolu also did the same thing. So, what has
Asiwaju got to do with it? Asiwaju has even said everybody should go for
primary, so let him go for primary now. Let him go for primary election
– he has everything to his advantage. You are the incumbent governor
and I want to believe you have more people to donate money to you.

Some
people say he doesn’t have the political structure. That is news to me.
Are they saying he is not a politician? Is that what they are saying? I
need to be educated, because if you want to occupy that position you
must be a politician and to the extent that you are politician, you must
be part and parcel of them. So, what you will be saying is that if he
doesn’t have a structure, then, he is a foreigner to that system and
that simply means you don’t belong there. But if you had the opportunity
to be there, you better honourably leave the place.

But
is it unfair to subject an incumbent to primary election? No incumbent
had been subjected a primary election before, including Asiwaju himself,
why him?

I have told you how we arrived at the present
situation. I told you that initially it was not fashionable to even have
primary. But when I became the national legal adviser of the party as
the custodian of the rules, I started enforcing it. Today, it is
established.

Something starts some day and somewhere. You cannot
say because something has not worked before, it will never work. Since
it is now working, let him subject himself to it. Why must it be
automatic? It cannot even be automatic anyway, because there is a
process in the constitution of the party and you must follow that
process otherwise, every other thing becomes illegal. It is as simple as
that.

With the whole drama that has played out in the
past couple of days and how he has been humiliated, what do you think
will be the implications if he was eventually handed the second term
ticket?

Nobody is humiliating him except he is humiliating
himself. To the best of my knowledge, what has happened is that some
other people have come out to contest for the party ticket with him.
They have been doing their ground work, contacting people and mobilising
support. Let him go about too, contacting people and mobilising
supports.The people now are the constituency of all aspirants. So,
go to the people, marshal your arguments, convince them and note please,
there is no reversal, because nothing has happened. The screening
exercise will soon take place let him go for screening, then primary. It
is after then that we will know who the party structure wants.

There
are insinuations in certain circles that it could be suicidal for
Asiwaju to give him the ticket, because given the governor’s nature, he
might fight back. Would that be reasonable enough to stop him?

Well,
in the first place, I have told you that this thing has nothing to do
with Asiwaju, because when I read about those nonsenses in the
newspapers, I get angry. Will Asiwaju be the only one that will vote at
the primaries? It is the entire party structure that is saying this is
the way they want to go, it has nothing to do with Asiwaju and honestly
speaking, the man needs to be shielded from the process. Let everybody
go to the field.

Besides, it is not Asiwaju that will conduct the
primaries; it is the national secretariat of the party that is going to
conduct the primaries, so his handlers should desist from involving
Asiwaju in the matter. Let them face the two other aspirants and tell
them how they are incompetent to compete with him.

What is your projection of the next election given what is currently happening within your party?

Well,
with what is happening in the party right now, if the primary were to
hold today, the aspirant with the upper hand is Sanwoolu.

In
the event that your party is not fielding the incumbent, what are your
party’s chances especially, against a candidate like Jimi Agbaje of the
PDP?

Honestly, I am not worried at all. If it were to be
otherwise in our party then I would be worried. With any of those two
other guys, I am not worried. Take Jide for example, within the last one
week, he has been able to integrate the opposing forces. He is
beginning to neutralise the dichotomy, which I think is a welcome
development.

That is why it is better to have people with
capacity and experience in human management. Not somebody that will say
you are quarrelling with my friend I will kill you. Why would anybody
cry more than the bereaved?

Thanks For Reading! Please Support us...

Kevin Djakpor Blog is editorially independent - our journalism is free and accessible. But the revenue we get from advertising is falling, so we increasingly need our readers like you to support us. Support Kevin Djakpor Blog with as little as $1

More on Kevin Djakpor Blog

Why Ambode Doesn't Deserve 2nd Term - Muiz Banire

Dr. Muiz Banire, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, is a
man of many addresses. A law teacher, legal practitioner, politician and
convener, United Action for Change, a political advocacy and leadership
capacity building organisation. The erstwhile National Legal Adviser of
the ruling All Progressives Congress is often viewed in certain
quarters as controversial on account of his principled positions on
issues. But in all, he is not bothered. Thus, in this interview with
Olawale Olaleye and Olaseni Durojaiye, he holds nothing back as he
dissects issues of political currency and sundry others.

It is
curious to know that you were the first person to stand more or less
against the current Governor of Lagos State, Akinwunmi Ambode. You stood
against him in many respects. Why was this so? Was it that the two of
you had certain connections not known to the public or could it be a
case of animosity towards him? However, it would seem that some of what
you feared would happen are beginning to unfold, what exactly did you
see that made you uncomfortable with his choice?

In the first
instance, I regard what we are experiencing in the state right now as a
divine intervention in the interest of the state as a whole and that of
politicians as well. Like you rightly said, I saw this right from
inception but I was the lone voice that shouted several times but the
party people never saw it. Rather, most of them castigated and harassed
me and kept intimidating me, even victimised me. But of course, I was
unrelenting, undaunted and resolute.

Now, God has suddenly opened
their eyes to the reality and all of them have now taken the gauntlet
and shouting ‘we’re fed up with the governor; we don’t want him again’.
In the first instance, he has never been part of the political movement
of this state or part of the governance system; he was at best an
Accountant General.He never dealt with the issues of policies,
development and programmes with us. We dealt with such. It would have
been best if somebody within that circle, who must have known where we
left issues; people that we had dealt with; those to be sustained, those
to be improved on and those to be jettisoned.

But somebody, who
spent the larger part of his life at the council level and suddenly
emerged at the state level as Accountant General now governing a state
as complex as Lagos? Certainly, it would be challenging to him. I saw
the picture and knew we were endangering ourselves generally and I drew
the attention of everybody including Asiwaju to it then.

Unfortunately,
despite the fact that we were not only coerced into working for him,
which we all did. In fact, I used to boast that I was among the top five
people that worked for him to get to where he is today, but what did we
get in return? Of course, we are living witnesses to my own story.

Regardless,
the reality is that once you get to that position, even the people that
are highly cerebral will still be receptive to ideas and suggestions
from others. But what about someone, who shuts his doors at other people
and believes he’s the only one who can do things the way and manner he
considers right? The result is what we are seeing today. Today,
everybody has now seen including the general populace (not only the
politicians) that we are all endangered except something is done. I
thank God that I am vindicated at the end of the day.

But what
do you think informs his now resentful disposition? Could it be lack of
exposure especially, that you said he spent a major part of his life at
the local government?

Well, exposure might be part of the
reasons. It is not even about going to school alone. Like we used to
joke, some people passed through the university but the university did
not pass through them. Beyond that, the fact that you have a degree
doesn’t mean you will make a good manager to start with.

Second,
experience and exposure matter. You can never discount experience
particularly in governance. My experience has shown me that if you bring
any one from outside of the system to come and govern any state, he
will still be struggling the first two years and by the third year, he
will just be laying foundation and the next election is already around
the corner.

Beyond that, again, the nature of the person also
counts. As a leader, you must be receptive to everybody’s idea and you
must be accessible. Once a leader is not accessible, he has already
failed. People must be able to reach you; they must be able to interact
with you; they must also be able to criticise you; you must be receptive
to criticisms.

A leader that is not receptive has failed.
Unfortunately, I think it is just his nature. He is just not receptive
to others and there appears to be some measure of arrogance in him that
will not allow him to share other people’s opinion. You can’t be right
on all issues.The fact that they call you ‘Your Excellency,’ does
not mean you are excellent; it is just a glorification. He probably got
the title of ‘His Excellency’ wrong to think he could do no wrong. It
can’t be. The state does not belong to one person; we are all
stakeholders in the state. Any policy that is introduced will affect us
all in one way or the other, so when we voice out our opinion, why must
you then persecute us, more so some of us are Lagosians of the first
order?

A lot of people had done several analyses of him but I
really don’t know what the problem is with him. Again, like I said
earlier, you can never discount the issue of experience and exposure,
which he lacks when it comes to the issue of governance.

As an insider, at what time did Asiwaju realise it was time to pull the plug on the governor’s second term bid?

I
honestly don’t know. What I know is that in the last four or five
months, there has been a subtle evaluation of the administration, and I
could tell from his body language and that of people around him that
they were beginning to realise that they were in trouble.

By that
time, they had begun to realise that if the governor was presented for a
second term, the success of the party at the poll was endangered.
Again, information reaching me shows that there have been some polls,
which showed that there was a looming problem if the party went ahead to
field the current governor in the polls.

Since the drama
surrounding the second term bid of Governor Ambode began, a lot of
people have been speculating what the shortcomings are. Can we have you
address the specifics?

There are a lot of issues and I do
point them out but people were like why say it and I am like why won’t I
say what I know. Take the issue of Environment, for instance. I
personally know the state of the environment when I left as
commissioner. Again, take the issue of climate change.

As of that
time we were among the first 10 in the entire world. Our activities on
climate change earned us a seat on the Board of World Health
Organisation during that period. There was hardly anywhere in the world
where the issue of climate change was to be discussed without involving
Lagos State, because we escalated the issue and took it so seriously so
much that we became a force to be reckoned with. Where is the issue of
climate change today? It is as good as dead.

Look at the issue of
waste management. We had succeeded largely in empowering people by way
of private sector participation in waste management. We were getting it
right and improving. Suddenly, somewhere somebody came with one funny
policy and one funny company, maybe from space, emerged to manage our
waste. So, Nigerians can no longer manage our wastes and we had to go
and get a foreign company to come and help us manage wastes.

When
the company came in, I granted an interview wherein I said from what I
have seen of them, definitely, the company had no experience in waste
management. The moment I started seeing wheeler bins on the roads –
nowhere in the world do they put wheeler bins on the road except at
construction sites and where they are normally put them are hidden areas
or designated dump sites.

What you find on the roads and streets
are litter bins, smaller ones like drums. So, immediately I saw that, I
said definitely this company does not have experience in waste
management. Yet, Lagos State went ahead to give guarantee in billions
for such an inexperienced company?Then they started putting up
wheeler bins on the road thereby legalising dumping of refuse on the
road and turning the spots to dumpsites. So, people were populating the
spots with refuse and they couldn’t cope. Eventually, see where we are
today. Half of the state is in state of epidemic as we talk. You need to
go to the hinterland – Mushin, Ajegunle and others – in fact, as far as
I am concerned, those ones live on refuse dump.

Look at how
flood now ravages the state. We had conquered flood largely. We took the
issue of flood control very seriously. We used to prepare for the rainy
season as if you were preparing for marriages or any social event.
Apart from the fact that we had a programme to clean all the drains
every quarter, few months to every rainy season we’d mobilised all
resources and cleaned all the channels.

We will mobilise all the
local government councils, they take over the tertiary drainage and we
take over the secondary canals. We would clear all the drainages
immediately. What they do today is that they will give out works. I saw
one of them, the contractor claimed to have done three kilometres
whereas he only did the first 300 metres, so, they will only peep and
say, ‘see that one and they’d say yes the job is done’. That is the kind
of scenarios that you see today.

When I was in the environment
ministry, it dared not happen. Some of my members of staff are still
alive. We would go from one end to the other; we were on the road all
weekends and our phones were open to all residents to tell us anywhere
there was problem. We don’t sleep, we were alive to our responsibilities
and challenges, but all these are no more in place.

During the
Fashola administration you dared not engage in construction works and
endanger the populace; you dared not litter the place with stone or iron
rods, not all what you have today. Doing so not only constitutes danger
to residents, it is also an abuse of the environment. In fact, the
aesthetics of the state is largely gone.

Talk about
transportation. I saw the buses that they just imported and I started
laughing. How could anyone have thought of such buses in this age and
time in a city like Lagos? In fact, Lagos is more than a mega city; we
are in excess of 20 million. A mega city is a city within a population
of 10 million.

Right from the period of Jakande, we had known
that what we need in Lagos are Mass Transit buses. How could we bring in
those types of buses at this age? We are going back. The buses will
only compound the traffic situation.Again, we have enough bus stops
that are not being used in Lagos, yet, they are building more and more
bus stops all over Lagos, when people will not use it. The funds being
wasted in that area if I were in his shoes I would have expended it on
motivating LASTMA officials, get them more logistics to manage the
traffic in the state.

In London, they make use of high capacity
buses – mass transit buses – yet how many layby do you see around
London, because they are supposed to be moving? At each bus stop, they
can spend more than a minute. Why would somebody want to build houses
for miscreants and shops for ogogoro sellers and petty traders? Just be
patient, you would see that in another three to four months, that is
what it would turn to. You are creating another social menace, because
that is where all of them will turn to as their new market.

These
are part of the dangers of not looking at things holistically. You must
always look at things holistically. Look at the BRT initiative. I
introduced BRT to Lagos State and we had our plans. They have distorted
it now. I feel ashamed when I see the construction going on along Agege
Motor road; I feel ashamed at how they have messed up the whole road and
how they have technically shown the physically challenged the red card.

They
are building some funny looking pedestrian bridges all over the road.
In the first place, how does the physically challenged get to the middle
of the road to join the BRT buses? What you have on that road is what
is called design error. The BRT should have been on the outer lane. They
didn’t know how I introduced or why I introduced the one on Ikorodu
Road, because they never asked. Instead of them to ask how we arrived at
that conclusion, they didn’t ask; they just went there and started
replicating what we did on Ikorodu Road, without factoring several other
considerations.

They thought the solution was to put pedestrian
bridges in place. Even the pedestrian bridges are so ugly. Some
engineers have even queried the stability and integrity of those
pedestrian bridges. From my perspective, the beauty of that place has
been disfigured completely.

Somebody was talking about Airport
Road and I said to them that it was during my administration that we
designed the Airport Road. I gave him the design.The construction
ought to have taken place during Fashola’s tenure, but for the fact that
the federal government at the time said after the construction was
completed, they would be the ones that would collect revenue from the
adverts on the road, then we said how can that be? How can I be playing
for IICC and be collecting salary from Rangers Football Club? It doesn’t
add up. That was the basis upon which we could not go ahead.

Then
Fashola said now that I am the minster, I am ready to construct the
road with federal government funds, he said no. He said he would do it
with Lagos State funds, the money that could have been diverted to
several inner roads that are in terrible state now. He made us miss that
money. Fashola came around and said he has appropriated money for that
road in the federal budget and it will be done, and you take another
place, the next thing was blackmail.

What are the interventions
in schools? I go to the General Hospital in Ikeja and I see patients on
the floor in state. With N30billion internally generated revenue? This
is part of the problem caused by somebody, who has not been part of the
system and suddenly assumed leadership of the state. If it had been any
of these two people that are being paraded now, Obafemi Hamzat and
Babajide Sanwo-Olu, apart from the fact that they have been part of the
system since 2003, they know everything about what we have been doing.
They are best suited for the job. They know who and who did what; they
can always call people up to ask questions: what happened during so so
and so project? What did we conclude on?

Why didn’t we go ahead
with that project? In my own very strong view, that is what is called
continuity. Somebody that has been part of the system takes over from
one person and who takes over from that person is also from within the
system. That is what is called continuity. When I was raising these
issues, everybody was abusing, denigrating me and saying all manners of
things. Am I not being vindicated today?

Do you think it is too late to get him a re-election ticket?

No,
it’s not too late, and that is one of the misconceptions that get me
angry since this drama started. He took nomination form, Hamzat took the
same form and Jide Sanwoolu also did the same thing. So, what has
Asiwaju got to do with it? Asiwaju has even said everybody should go for
primary, so let him go for primary now. Let him go for primary election
– he has everything to his advantage. You are the incumbent governor
and I want to believe you have more people to donate money to you.

Some
people say he doesn’t have the political structure. That is news to me.
Are they saying he is not a politician? Is that what they are saying? I
need to be educated, because if you want to occupy that position you
must be a politician and to the extent that you are politician, you must
be part and parcel of them. So, what you will be saying is that if he
doesn’t have a structure, then, he is a foreigner to that system and
that simply means you don’t belong there. But if you had the opportunity
to be there, you better honourably leave the place.

But
is it unfair to subject an incumbent to primary election? No incumbent
had been subjected a primary election before, including Asiwaju himself,
why him?

I have told you how we arrived at the present
situation. I told you that initially it was not fashionable to even have
primary. But when I became the national legal adviser of the party as
the custodian of the rules, I started enforcing it. Today, it is
established.

Something starts some day and somewhere. You cannot
say because something has not worked before, it will never work. Since
it is now working, let him subject himself to it. Why must it be
automatic? It cannot even be automatic anyway, because there is a
process in the constitution of the party and you must follow that
process otherwise, every other thing becomes illegal. It is as simple as
that.

With the whole drama that has played out in the
past couple of days and how he has been humiliated, what do you think
will be the implications if he was eventually handed the second term
ticket?

Nobody is humiliating him except he is humiliating
himself. To the best of my knowledge, what has happened is that some
other people have come out to contest for the party ticket with him.
They have been doing their ground work, contacting people and mobilising
support. Let him go about too, contacting people and mobilising
supports.The people now are the constituency of all aspirants. So,
go to the people, marshal your arguments, convince them and note please,
there is no reversal, because nothing has happened. The screening
exercise will soon take place let him go for screening, then primary. It
is after then that we will know who the party structure wants.

There
are insinuations in certain circles that it could be suicidal for
Asiwaju to give him the ticket, because given the governor’s nature, he
might fight back. Would that be reasonable enough to stop him?

Well,
in the first place, I have told you that this thing has nothing to do
with Asiwaju, because when I read about those nonsenses in the
newspapers, I get angry. Will Asiwaju be the only one that will vote at
the primaries? It is the entire party structure that is saying this is
the way they want to go, it has nothing to do with Asiwaju and honestly
speaking, the man needs to be shielded from the process. Let everybody
go to the field.

Besides, it is not Asiwaju that will conduct the
primaries; it is the national secretariat of the party that is going to
conduct the primaries, so his handlers should desist from involving
Asiwaju in the matter. Let them face the two other aspirants and tell
them how they are incompetent to compete with him.

What is your projection of the next election given what is currently happening within your party?

Well,
with what is happening in the party right now, if the primary were to
hold today, the aspirant with the upper hand is Sanwoolu.

In
the event that your party is not fielding the incumbent, what are your
party’s chances especially, against a candidate like Jimi Agbaje of the
PDP?

Honestly, I am not worried at all. If it were to be
otherwise in our party then I would be worried. With any of those two
other guys, I am not worried. Take Jide for example, within the last one
week, he has been able to integrate the opposing forces. He is
beginning to neutralise the dichotomy, which I think is a welcome
development.

That is why it is better to have people with
capacity and experience in human management. Not somebody that will say
you are quarrelling with my friend I will kill you. Why would anybody
cry more than the bereaved?

Thanks For Reading! Please Support us...

Kevin Djakpor Blog is editorially independent - our journalism is free and accessible. But the revenue we get from advertising is falling, so we increasingly need our readers like you to support us. Support Kevin Djakpor Blog with as little as $1

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Kevin Djakpor Blog

KevinDjakpor Blog is the leading go-to sites for Breaking Political, celebrity and general news garnering millions ofpage views a month and rising rapidly.

Kevin Djakpor is the passionate and professional blogger, the founder and owner of Kevindjakporblog.com. Take a moment to click right through to his blog. It has tons of great posts on news, entertainment, culture, music, money, sports and many other fascinating areas of social life.